Firelight
by SonicTheHedgehog-Nerd
Summary: Everyone happens upon the fire of hope at least once in a lifetime. For an unnamed girl, she found these flames when saved by a mage in a time of need. She is abducted and raised in a realm of magic used for evil as a vital asset to the team. For seven years, she's done their bidding. But there comes a time when they ask too much, and the past must repeat itself at last. STH-N
1. Prologue

**((Hello, fellow readers! I mind just has a gaggle of story ideas; at the time of writing this, I'm also working on at least three other fanfictions. Writing more than one story gives me options if I'm ever in a writing mood. Sometimes I go on the computer and look at my Published list and think, "Hm, which story should I add on to today?" This is another story added to that list. I've decided to take a step back from what I usually write, which is Sonic stories (as my pen name implies), and work on something of another major interest of mine. I am a huge otaku, and one of my favorite animes is Fairy Tail. It's time I write a story a bit different from my others that I hope you all will enjoy! This chapter is merely a prologue. Welcome to the world of wizards and mages, and the odd comings and goings of evil and destruction. This is the story of how one girl's happening upon a certain wizard causes the path she's forced onto to change.))**

The sun sank below the horizon. The day had ended too soon, as usual. A young girl, not even ten years old, nestled herself in the corner of an alleyway for the night, holding her a ratty, stuffed rabbit, with frayed ears and a button eye missing, close to her chest. She buried her dusty face in her arms and tried to fall asleep.

She felt she had only just shut her eyes when she noticed a flickering orange light behind her eyelids. She opened them warily to see that the building in front of her was ablaze and crumbling away to ash. In the distance, she could hear explosions and sounds of a battle not far off. She sighed and lowered her eyelids. No use sleeping now.

She was just about to leave her spot when she felt the wall behind her warp and bend. Then she was flying on the winds of the explosion. Ashes burned her eyes and smoke and dust choked her. She landed on the hard concrete road and rolled a few feet before stopping. The girl sat up and rubbed her sore eyes with a gritty hand. When she opened them, she saw her toy rabbit laying several yards in front of her, where she had dropped it. Beyond it, she saw a fiery ball of blue flame hurtling toward her. She screamed and desperately reached for her doll, the one thing that would comfort her if she were to die, but the attempt was futile. The blast reached her, and the force of it blew her tarnished hair back. She shielded her face with her arm and cringed at the intense heat. Then she realized that she was still alive and looked up.

Standing just in front of her, sandaled feet digging into the pavement, was a boy, possibly seventeen, his arms forward, fingers spread. His scarf whipped out behind him as the blast he was holding off fought against his hands. She couldn't see his face, but she saw the muscles in his arms strain and flex as flames, orange and glowing, spread from his fingertips. These flames formed a sort of barrier between the blast and the boy. He drew his arms back, and then thrust his hands forward, and the fire shot in a stream from his palms, forcing the blast back and away, toward a target the girl couldn't see. It exploded in a blue and orange inferno upon impact. Only then did the boy seem to relax. He bent down and picked something up before turning to face the girl.

He had a kind face. His head of spiky pink hair seemed to glow orange in the firelight. Now, she could see that the scarf seemed to be made of some shiny, tough material, like large, white scales. The teen walked up to her, then crouched before her and handed the stuffed rabbit to her with a reassuring smile.

"You okay?" he asked her.

The girl nodded.

The boy grinned. "You get somewhere safe, okay? You can head toward the Fairy Tail guild hall up the road if you want."

She nodded again, still in shock over what had just happened in front of her.

The boy offered a hand to her. She took it, his skin hot but still a comfortable temperature, and stood. Then he turned around and jogged off towards – no, _into _– the remaining flames left over from the explosion. The girl turned around and ran toward the safety her hero had promised. She didn't ever arrive, and no one heard her screams.


	2. Seven Years Later

_SEVEN YEARS LATER…_

The girl was now a teenager. She stared at the giant, revolving mobile in the center of the room, large, man-sized spheres on the end of each rod. She sat in one of these spheres, and other people stood in the six others. They revolved around a center globe which seemed to be made out of transparent glass. Inside this globe stood a person wearing a long, white robe embroidered in gold runes. He had a long, gray beard and a sort of scope over one eye.

"Remus," spoke a short man in one sphere, whose mustache twitched as he spoke, "our plan is falling apart. What shall we do?"

"Nothing, doncha know," another man in a second sphere said. "There's nothing to be done! There's no way we can harvest enough power to complete it, doncha know!"

"You never have any faith, Akon!" shouted a third man. "You don't put any effort into the plan! I don't even understand why you're here!"

A heated argument broke out between the three men. The unnamed girl watched quietly, listening. She knew the plan they spoke of. This group of eight people, including her, wanted to overthrow the Magic Council and destroy the wizard Guilds. They were all non-magic users who relied on technology and a special power they all possessed. The part of the plan that was failing was a machine they needed to power was unstable. Its purpose was to destroy all Guilds at once, as well as the Magic Council. To power it, they needed an immeasurable amount of filtered magic energy, which was incredibly hard to come by. The girl wasn't for or against this plan; she had spent the last seven years in this isolated facility, being trained and taught by this group known as the Magna Fáze, and had very little memory of ever being anywhere else.

The man in the center globe, Remus, who was also the Fáze's leader, pounded the base of his metal staff on the bottom of the sphere he stood in.

"Order! Order to the Fáze!" he called, his voice echoing throughout the room, which immediately quieted down. "Akon, the only reason you're here is for the power you possess. In fact, that may be the only reason you're all here. You all count as a valuable resource to our cause due to your knowledge and power. However, you remain faithful to me despite the fact that you're being used. This is because you know the consequences of betrayal."

The girl cringed at the memory. The ninth member of the group was the first – and so far, the last – person do defy Remus. As punishment, he was plugged into the machine's power source and overloaded with artificial magic energy until his heart burst. It was a very painful way to die, judging from the man's screams when he was dying. She could tell everyone else remembered this as well. It had given them all nightmares for weeks.

Remus's eyes gleamed, knowing he had struck the right nerve.

"Tomorrow, we head out on our next task, and if we fail, there will be… severe consequences." His glare landed on each member of the team, each one recoiling under his harsh gaze. However, the girl remained firm and silent.

"You okay, Merida?" asked a woman who shared the girl's globe. She had used the name the members of the Fáze had given the girl when she refused to say her real name. The woman was named Monique, and was a sister figure for Merida. Merida nodded and turned her attention back to the meeting, which continued on.

Merida silently shut the door to her room and turned the lock, which clicked into place. The windows were dark; there would be no tender light of the moon to keep her company tonight. After making sure she was alone, Merida pried open a loose floorboard under her bed and dug out some worn books. The books' titles were written in an ancient language, but she could read them. They held the history of magic in their pages, and Merida wanted to know all of it. True, she didn't oppose the Magna Fáze's plans, but she didn't like their no-magic rule. No one knew of her thoughts or what she did in her room at night; her personal vow of silence and secrecy of her past protected her, as everyone knew not to disturb her or ask her questions. She flipped open a thick volume to a marked page and began to read. If she would've forgotten to close the curtains that night, or to properly lock the door, the guards in the hall would have seen the strange blue light flickering in the room. For now, however, her magic remained a well-kept secret.


End file.
